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Saturday, September 13, 2003
Tomorrow is my last shift at my restaurant. When I step back from this, I'm really, really happy and proud that I am leaving. A bunch a friends are coming in for lunch, and I'll see most of the people I care about during the shift. I haven't gotten any writing done since Thursday night... I'm hopeful for Monday, when this mess is done.
So much is changing that I barely know what to write. But things are good. This is all good. I am capable of making everything good.
So much is changing that I barely know what to write. But things are good. This is all good. I am capable of making everything good.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
So obviously it's been a three-post day, but I think I knew that when I got up. And I'm inspired by my brother Kent, who writes when he feels like it, sometimes a few times a day and other times not at all.
As for the above, I know my side of the street is clean, and I feel much less strongly already than when I posted it a few hours ago. Sometimes things have to get super crappy for me to actually see the truth in a situation.
I dined with two of my brothers and several friends, and drove home with Ian and Tessa. The twin lights are up again. It is so, so strange that it has already been two years, but New York has in a way moved on. Tomorrow will be another day. But I'm left to wonder if September 11th will always be a spectacularly beautiful day, as if the weather gods want to be sure to give this day it's due.
As for the above, I know my side of the street is clean, and I feel much less strongly already than when I posted it a few hours ago. Sometimes things have to get super crappy for me to actually see the truth in a situation.
I dined with two of my brothers and several friends, and drove home with Ian and Tessa. The twin lights are up again. It is so, so strange that it has already been two years, but New York has in a way moved on. Tomorrow will be another day. But I'm left to wonder if September 11th will always be a spectacularly beautiful day, as if the weather gods want to be sure to give this day it's due.
On a day like today I would like to ask for a little less self-involvement, a little more awareness, a little more owning up to your own actions. Don't choose to do something, as you did today, to make you feel better as opposed to making me feel better. Don't apologize for the specifics, apologize for instigating this in the first place, for making that poor choice, for causing me pain. I'm done apologizing for what part I've played and made it clear that I am done. But don't be so casual and cavalier. I'm done, leave me be, I know what's really going on now and I'm embarrased as hell that my solitary distress has been so public. I'm embarrased and sad for that time lost, lost when had I known then what was really going on I could have been so much better so faster.
So let's truly be done. We will all be friends again soon, I hope, and I too will choose more carefully next time.
So let's truly be done. We will all be friends again soon, I hope, and I too will choose more carefully next time.
I have an appointment this morning at 8:45 with my new trainer. I did the math last night and there is no way I can afford her, but that's not really the issue right now. This issue right now is that I have a stupid gym appointment the minute before 8:46 on 9/11. Right now two years ago I was rousing myself to get to work with a horrible hangover. Christ, it was a beautiful day.
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Is it really stealing when you are able to connect to someone's airport, say, at a coffee shop in Brooklyn, and they don't have a password and so your built-in airport card allows you to check your email and post a blog? I mean, if they didn't want you to use it, they would put a password on their account, right? I'm just sayin'.
I've just finished another chapter in my book. I find I can't write for more than a couple of hours every day, at least, not yet. I haven't had more than a couple of hours until this week, and I've not been able to train myself to sit still for that amount of time.
When I was up at the farm two weekends ago, one of the wonderful house guests was a Broadway playwright. I asked him about writing fiction, told him about my book, and asked if it was okay that I wasn't sure how it was going to end. He said that some degree of mystery was good, but that I should quit writing every day only when there was a fresh, new, exciting idea to start with tomorrow. I'm writing about a weekend, and it is fictionalized fact, so I know where I'm going each day when I sit down to write. But the end is elusive to me, and I'm curious where both my life and this novel will take me.
My innards feel markedly better today, enough that I went to my first yoga class in weeks, and I'm hanging around the neighborhood in hopes of looking at a new apartment. It is near 5th Ave here in the Slope, a duplex with a backyard and two separate, private floors. Sounds pretty cool to me, if certain other parts of my life fall into place.
I'm ready, I feel, I'm ready for so many good things. This year has been humbling and hard, joyous and heartbreaking, and I've made some difficult decisions and recoveries, and I really feel like it's time to turn a corner. I want to live an honest, present life, and I want to be treated with the same respect that I'm trying to give myself. That's all. I'm ready to allow some good things to happen to me.
I've just finished another chapter in my book. I find I can't write for more than a couple of hours every day, at least, not yet. I haven't had more than a couple of hours until this week, and I've not been able to train myself to sit still for that amount of time.
When I was up at the farm two weekends ago, one of the wonderful house guests was a Broadway playwright. I asked him about writing fiction, told him about my book, and asked if it was okay that I wasn't sure how it was going to end. He said that some degree of mystery was good, but that I should quit writing every day only when there was a fresh, new, exciting idea to start with tomorrow. I'm writing about a weekend, and it is fictionalized fact, so I know where I'm going each day when I sit down to write. But the end is elusive to me, and I'm curious where both my life and this novel will take me.
My innards feel markedly better today, enough that I went to my first yoga class in weeks, and I'm hanging around the neighborhood in hopes of looking at a new apartment. It is near 5th Ave here in the Slope, a duplex with a backyard and two separate, private floors. Sounds pretty cool to me, if certain other parts of my life fall into place.
I'm ready, I feel, I'm ready for so many good things. This year has been humbling and hard, joyous and heartbreaking, and I've made some difficult decisions and recoveries, and I really feel like it's time to turn a corner. I want to live an honest, present life, and I want to be treated with the same respect that I'm trying to give myself. That's all. I'm ready to allow some good things to happen to me.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
I accomplished exactly nothing today other than having some strange and painful things done to my nether regions. I don't recommend a colposcopy or biopsy if you are looking for a good time. It was fast, thankfully, but left me down for the count for the rest of the day. Wanna know what it's like? Read ahead.
It starts with, of course, getting in the stirrups, but then there is something you don't expect: vinegar. Cold, stinging vinegar sprayed all over where the aforementioned sun doesn't shine. That is what shows the bad stuff. And then, the usual speculum, but then... then they take tissue samples and THEN your doctor says there is a suspicious-looking patch on your cervix, and then she takes the biopsy... a pulling sting of your deepest insides. After that, they have to put some goop on your insides so you will stop bleeding, and warn of "passing" it and not to be alarmed if it is black.
And then, quickly, it is over, and you lay alone on the little bed trying not to cry or pass out. But when you finally do go out, your brother is there waiting to take you for a veggie burger. And after that, you can go to your other brother's apartment and watch cable all day and all night without feeling guilty.
Except when the 9/11 specials come on the tele. I have no feelings of guilt associated with it, but I'm unable to drool and fall half asleep like I can when I'm watching "John Q" or "Signs" on cable. The show we watched tonight was beautifully done, but I don't know how much I need to relive those days. I find some peace in the stories of the people who were in the buildings and lived to tell about it, but I don't think I need to watch the towers fall again. I saw it the first time, and then had to watch it a hundred times on TV to believe what I saw live, but I believe it now. I don't know what I'm doing Thursday and I don't know what I want to do. It's going to be another beautiful day, just like it was two years ago.
A week from Thursday I'll know if I have to have surgery on my cervix, depending on the results from the biopsy. Fun, fun, fun.
It starts with, of course, getting in the stirrups, but then there is something you don't expect: vinegar. Cold, stinging vinegar sprayed all over where the aforementioned sun doesn't shine. That is what shows the bad stuff. And then, the usual speculum, but then... then they take tissue samples and THEN your doctor says there is a suspicious-looking patch on your cervix, and then she takes the biopsy... a pulling sting of your deepest insides. After that, they have to put some goop on your insides so you will stop bleeding, and warn of "passing" it and not to be alarmed if it is black.
And then, quickly, it is over, and you lay alone on the little bed trying not to cry or pass out. But when you finally do go out, your brother is there waiting to take you for a veggie burger. And after that, you can go to your other brother's apartment and watch cable all day and all night without feeling guilty.
Except when the 9/11 specials come on the tele. I have no feelings of guilt associated with it, but I'm unable to drool and fall half asleep like I can when I'm watching "John Q" or "Signs" on cable. The show we watched tonight was beautifully done, but I don't know how much I need to relive those days. I find some peace in the stories of the people who were in the buildings and lived to tell about it, but I don't think I need to watch the towers fall again. I saw it the first time, and then had to watch it a hundred times on TV to believe what I saw live, but I believe it now. I don't know what I'm doing Thursday and I don't know what I want to do. It's going to be another beautiful day, just like it was two years ago.
A week from Thursday I'll know if I have to have surgery on my cervix, depending on the results from the biopsy. Fun, fun, fun.
Monday, September 08, 2003
I worked at my restaurant today, one down, four more to go. Right after work I cycled to my new personal trainer, who is beautiful, thoughtful, alert, sweet, and smart. I can't afford her, even though she is comparitively dirt cheap, but I feel like I can't afford not to hire her. She will be all good in my life. Straight from there I headed back into the city to have my first meeting with the folks at my new job. My schedule is set, and is sweet, and I'm also working the opening next week. The week after that, I'm off to California.
Tomorrow morning I get to have wee cameras put in a place where the sun really ought not to shine. It is not going to tickle. But at least it will be done, and I'll know if I have to have surgery, and I should also know tomorrow if the Peace Corps is even an option in my life.
Speaking of Peace Corps, I got the rare pleasure of meeting Jill, a blog reader from D.C. She was in the Corps and inspired me to apply in the first place, and answered all my questions since my application process began. I should be so lucky to find such good people by writing this blog.
Why does general anasthesia have to be so dangerous? Why come? Why can't they just put me out tomorrow and wake me up long after the ugliness is over?
Sigh.
In better news, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!!!!
Tomorrow morning I get to have wee cameras put in a place where the sun really ought not to shine. It is not going to tickle. But at least it will be done, and I'll know if I have to have surgery, and I should also know tomorrow if the Peace Corps is even an option in my life.
Speaking of Peace Corps, I got the rare pleasure of meeting Jill, a blog reader from D.C. She was in the Corps and inspired me to apply in the first place, and answered all my questions since my application process began. I should be so lucky to find such good people by writing this blog.
Why does general anasthesia have to be so dangerous? Why come? Why can't they just put me out tomorrow and wake me up long after the ugliness is over?
Sigh.
In better news, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!!!!
Sunday, September 07, 2003
138 Americans died during the invasion of Iraq. 149 have died since then. I'm going to heave a heavy sigh, refrain from belaboring the obvious, and leave it at that. Though one of these folks who is running against said Yucky Man should hire me.
I like spending my days writing. Is there a sugar daddy out there who wants to pay my rent? In exchange for conversation?
I like spending my days writing. Is there a sugar daddy out there who wants to pay my rent? In exchange for conversation?
The year is 1986. I am thirteen, Sean is fifteen, and our family has just disintegrated. We are living with my mom in a condo we couldn't afford in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Sean and I share the master bedroom (him on the top bunk of his bunk bed, me on a futon mattress on the floor). We are talking, I am lamenting (great surprise!!) the loss of some guy. Or maybe Sean is lamenting the loss of some girl. Actually, we are probably talking about something totally random, since we both were able to procure pretty much anything we wanted, if only briefly. So Sean says something like, "I can't believe that he/she did/said that about so-and-so". Apparently I quite nonchalantly replied, "Well, everyone always knows the truth about everything, we just choose to believe the lies we tell ourselves."
Sean still quotes this, and quite literally mentioned it today. This was the same year that I joked, "To love someone is to change everything about yourself for them". Oh, the things I had figured out at thirteen. It was also the same year that my dad came to pick me up for a day and found me passed out in the living room with about ten people he'd never seen before and the remains of a night filled with fuzzy navels. The sheer amount of empty bottles of booze in the kitchen could have been enough to put him over the edge; it is greatly to his credit that he just laughed about it and figured I'd come out okay in the end.
The idea of believing your own lies, which I've done a few too many times in my own life, ties in with another tragedy of being a thirteen-genXer. We are now fully capable of making informed decisions on who we spend time with. In our world, there are no arranged marriages, no proper code of courting, no rules really other than taking your own time to get to know someone. Obviously, we still fail, fail all the time, but that is often not because we don't make an informed decision but because we choose what we, deep down, know is wrong or doomed. Again, believing the lies we tell ourselves.
My problem, you know, in the top 20 things in my life that give me pause, is that I don't lie to myself as much as I reinvent other people. The only people who are real and true in my life, as in the only people who have not been altered by my mind are my family. My mom, my brothers, my three "sisters", and my dad are the only people who I haven't reinvented into something foreign to who they really are. These are the only people who I really know, and also the only people who continually surprise me with their kindness, goodness, and humor. Which is telling, because if I didn't reinvent the others in my life then maybe they could surprise me rather than disappoint.
I don't do this so much with my friends. I know I do it to some extent, but it is usually that I am quick to believe that my friends are simply wonderful. They are then bound to disappoint, which hurts me, but brings me back to the idea that I've idealized them and so can't be hurt when they are human. The place where this tendency of mine does the most damage is in my relationship with men. I always knew how dangerous my long-distance relationship with Wayne was because when he wasn't there I could believe he was the best, most brilliant man on earth. Before him, I would keep my men at an arm's length or choose men who would keep me just as far away. I could then invent who I thought that person was and love him all the more.
I've also been prone to putting all the misery of my world onto the idea of a person, and used that as my catalyst, my button, my touchstone of dread. I lie to myself and the world, saying if this one thing was good, if I could have this one thing, then everything else would fall into place. And, in the meantime, reinventing this person into being the absolute best one, the only one for me, the answer to everything. I've done this more than once, and I'm going to try to not do it again.
I would like to officially take responsibility for everything I've done, for all the joy and misery in my life, for my terrible mistakes and for all the good things I've been able to do. I'd like to acknowledge, once again, that I live with both feet in my mouth, and I never, never, never want to be the cause of someone else's pain, even inadvertently. There is so much shame in my life, and that is partly why I write this blog. I'm shaming my shame in public, exorcising it, acknowledging it for all the world (or rather, the twelve people who might read this blog) to see. I don’t want to reinvent people anymore, and I don't want to make anyone into something they're not.
I got my third PAP results back last week, and it turns out that the cells on my cervix are behaving even worse than they were a month ago. My doctor told the colpo doctors that I had to be seen as soon as possible, and the colpo doctors made space to fit me in the next day, which was last Thursday. Well I woke that morning with my period, so I am now having a colposcopy and biopsy of my cervix on Tuesday. I believe in a body/mind connection to some degree, and always believed I could talk my body out of cancer. I'll know much more after Tuesday but I feel like it's worth it to examine my life and think about what I can do to make my cervix happier.
I just got home from work... yes, it's 3 AM... and I turned onto my block and the very familar smell of a burnt house almost knocked me over. I was terrified that it would be my own, but instead, as soon as I got home, the fire trucks started crashing through my neighborhood. It may be the only thing I brought with me when I stopped working for the Red Cross, but I will always be able to pick out that smell.
Sean still quotes this, and quite literally mentioned it today. This was the same year that I joked, "To love someone is to change everything about yourself for them". Oh, the things I had figured out at thirteen. It was also the same year that my dad came to pick me up for a day and found me passed out in the living room with about ten people he'd never seen before and the remains of a night filled with fuzzy navels. The sheer amount of empty bottles of booze in the kitchen could have been enough to put him over the edge; it is greatly to his credit that he just laughed about it and figured I'd come out okay in the end.
The idea of believing your own lies, which I've done a few too many times in my own life, ties in with another tragedy of being a thirteen-genXer. We are now fully capable of making informed decisions on who we spend time with. In our world, there are no arranged marriages, no proper code of courting, no rules really other than taking your own time to get to know someone. Obviously, we still fail, fail all the time, but that is often not because we don't make an informed decision but because we choose what we, deep down, know is wrong or doomed. Again, believing the lies we tell ourselves.
My problem, you know, in the top 20 things in my life that give me pause, is that I don't lie to myself as much as I reinvent other people. The only people who are real and true in my life, as in the only people who have not been altered by my mind are my family. My mom, my brothers, my three "sisters", and my dad are the only people who I haven't reinvented into something foreign to who they really are. These are the only people who I really know, and also the only people who continually surprise me with their kindness, goodness, and humor. Which is telling, because if I didn't reinvent the others in my life then maybe they could surprise me rather than disappoint.
I don't do this so much with my friends. I know I do it to some extent, but it is usually that I am quick to believe that my friends are simply wonderful. They are then bound to disappoint, which hurts me, but brings me back to the idea that I've idealized them and so can't be hurt when they are human. The place where this tendency of mine does the most damage is in my relationship with men. I always knew how dangerous my long-distance relationship with Wayne was because when he wasn't there I could believe he was the best, most brilliant man on earth. Before him, I would keep my men at an arm's length or choose men who would keep me just as far away. I could then invent who I thought that person was and love him all the more.
I've also been prone to putting all the misery of my world onto the idea of a person, and used that as my catalyst, my button, my touchstone of dread. I lie to myself and the world, saying if this one thing was good, if I could have this one thing, then everything else would fall into place. And, in the meantime, reinventing this person into being the absolute best one, the only one for me, the answer to everything. I've done this more than once, and I'm going to try to not do it again.
I would like to officially take responsibility for everything I've done, for all the joy and misery in my life, for my terrible mistakes and for all the good things I've been able to do. I'd like to acknowledge, once again, that I live with both feet in my mouth, and I never, never, never want to be the cause of someone else's pain, even inadvertently. There is so much shame in my life, and that is partly why I write this blog. I'm shaming my shame in public, exorcising it, acknowledging it for all the world (or rather, the twelve people who might read this blog) to see. I don’t want to reinvent people anymore, and I don't want to make anyone into something they're not.
I got my third PAP results back last week, and it turns out that the cells on my cervix are behaving even worse than they were a month ago. My doctor told the colpo doctors that I had to be seen as soon as possible, and the colpo doctors made space to fit me in the next day, which was last Thursday. Well I woke that morning with my period, so I am now having a colposcopy and biopsy of my cervix on Tuesday. I believe in a body/mind connection to some degree, and always believed I could talk my body out of cancer. I'll know much more after Tuesday but I feel like it's worth it to examine my life and think about what I can do to make my cervix happier.
I just got home from work... yes, it's 3 AM... and I turned onto my block and the very familar smell of a burnt house almost knocked me over. I was terrified that it would be my own, but instead, as soon as I got home, the fire trucks started crashing through my neighborhood. It may be the only thing I brought with me when I stopped working for the Red Cross, but I will always be able to pick out that smell.